The future is not what it used to be

Tuesday 18th July, 2017

In a piece on BD online David argues, as chair of the Academy of Urbanism, that we love predicting the future, but that we've lost the ambition to plan for it.

Spurred by the debates held at the recent events to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Milton Keynes, David writes that 'for all the excitement about the future as we presently see it, there were precious few ideas about how cities should respond. What is depressing, looking at the history of Milton Keynes, is the extent to which we have lost the confidence to plan at all. Our current crop of garden cities are small beer compared with the ambition of the original Milton Keynes planners. We may disagree with what they did but we can still admire their ambition and their belief that planning really could change the world.'